By Joshua Rosenstein, JTNews Correspondent
When recent Jewish Day School grad Joshua Niehaus left Seattle for a year in Israel on Hadassah’s Young Judaea program, he was expecting to have fun, meet girls and party. “I wasn’t even afraid,” says Niehaus. “I was just going to be a spectator, watching it all from the outside. Turns out the program was the total opposite.”
Like many young people returning from an Israel experience, Joshua found Young Judaea’s Year Course a life-changing experience. A few weeks after returning to Seattle, Niehaus and fellow Seattleite Jordan Brodsky have done a great deal of reflecting on their experiences.
“Things really changed for me within the first three months of the program.” Niehaus says, “I was practicing with my football team in a lot on Har Hatzofim in Jerusalem when suddenly we were shot at. We heard the shots really close and one of the guys saw them hit a wall nearby. Most of the guys hit the ground but me and one of my friends took off running.” That was the point that Niehaus says he started to immerse himself in what was going on and really live there. He and his team went on to play in the playoffs of the Jerusalem football league later that year.
Niehaus says the first four-month leg of the program in Jerusalem involved a great deal of discussion and argument about the politics and realities of Israel. He would go on lunch break with his classmates and often argue so strenuously that by the end of lunch no one had actually eaten anything.
“This was the most self-realizing year I have ever had,” Niehaus says. “I may not look or act any different, but all of my views have changed drastically. Before this year I thought that world peace was important and I was even willing to compromise my Jewish identity so as not to be in conflict with anyone. I wouldn’t have considered myself a Zionist or even pro-Israel. I was living in a fantasy world. After my experience this past year, I feel much more realistic. I also feel more right wing. I have a strong connection to Am Yisroel, and I definitely consider myself a Zionist.”
Niehaus chose the subsection of the program, which is defined by the Marvah component, a joint program with the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) in which the Americans spend two months doing Israeli Basic training activities which can then be applied towards their army service if they make aliyah.
Brodsky, a graduate of Northwest Yeshiva High School and a Seward Park native, chose the Orthodox track, a relatively new addition to the program. He chose Young Judaea’s Shalem program over a Yeshivah in New York because he wanted to really experience the land of Israel. “I’ve always been a strong Zionist,” Brodsky says. “I wanted to…get involved in the culture — not to stand out as a tourist; to learn Hebrew.”
Brodsky says the studying during the first four-month leg of the program in Jerusalem was so overwhelming that he came close to giving up. Participants earned a full year’s worth of college credit in four months. Not only were they studying secular subjects, but after a day of Jewish history, Zionism and ulpan they went on to study yeshiva studies like Gemara and Chumash late into the night. Classes ran from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., with breaks few and far between.
After the college work, Brodsky spent some time in ulpan learning Hebrew and then took an intensive 10-day medic course in Ashkelon, a small coastal city near the Gaza strip. Once he finished the course, he began volunteering for Magen David Adom, the Israeli equivalent to the Red Cross. After his six weeks in Ashkelon, he moved up to Haifa, where he spent two months pulling 16-hour shifts on first-responder intensive care units. Being on site after bombings, saving lives and seeing death up close had a resounding impact on Brodsky. “Now I know that I’m going pre-med,” Brodsky says. “I am going to be a doctor. I had never thought about it before this experience, but being able to say, I saved someone’s life…” He shakes his head.
Some things are difficult to say. “It’s hard to talk about this year and how it affected me,” Niehaus says. “I don’t like to talk to my friends here about it because they wouldn’t understand, they would focus on some surface issue; it goes so much deeper.”
For Brodsky one of those things was the death of medic instructor Yochai Perez, who was killed while doing reserve duty shortly after he finished training Brodsky. “That was when I felt truly Israeli: when I buried my friend and mentor,” Brodsky says.
Although the Young Judaea program did not involve any cross-cultural components or access to Israeli Arabs or Palestinians, both young men found themselves confronted with the “other.” Niehaus befriended a local falafel stand owner named Achmed and they went clubbing several times.
Brodsky encountered a Christian Arab while serving on the ambulance in Haifa.
“Even after the whole year, I still don’t have a good understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Brodsky says. “But whereas before I saw the tip of the iceberg sticking out, now after my year in Israel I can see the whole iceberg. It is huge and very deep.”
One thing both young men learned was not to believe a word the media says. “Watching the news was so aggravating,” Niehaus says, “even if they tried to sometimes make it sound evenhanded. I always tell people, every time I hear that Israel supposedly did something bad, I know it’s not really true.”
Both Brodsky and Niehaus have future plans involving Israel. Niehaus says he wants to go to Israel to serve in the IDF. While he is hesitant about the concept of aliyah, after his experience this past year, he feels a commitment to the state of Israel and a desire to contribute to her survival. Brodsky has already signed up for a new program that Young Judaea will be implementing this coming year. The new program, called a Shlav Bet, or Stage Two, has not yet been fully defined. Brodsky is looking forward to helping put it together.